The April Robin Murders Read online

  Craig Rice and Ed McBain

  The April Robin Murders

  one

  The water in the oblong swimming pool of the Skylight Motel was that brilliant blue-green color Bingo Riggs had seen pictured in magazines, but had never quite believed. Yet here it was, the same delicious but probably fraudulent blue of the illustrations, and here he was beside it, comfortably reclining on a wheeled mattress-and-wicker affair which someone had informed him was a loafer-lounge—and this, at last, was Hollywood.

  It didn’t disappoint him, no, not in the least.

  He lit a cigarette and watched his partner, Handsome Kusak, execute a graceful dive, and observed, with a kind of fraternal pride, the admiring glances he was getting from the feminine idlers around the pool. Handsome was a good six inches taller than Bingo, his dark hair had just a slight wave in it, and somehow on the drive from New York he’d managed to acquire a downright magnificent tan.

  Bingo sighed, and pulled his new white terry-cloth robe, with its big monogrammed BR outlined in brilliant orange, a little closer over his bony knees. His Hawaiian print bathing trunks were, he considered, infinitely superior to the conservative dark maroon ones that Handsome was wearing; but, after one thoughtful look at his skinny and decidedly pallid frame, he’d put on the robe, announced he had a slight head-cold coming on, and settled for the loafer-lounge beside the pool. And anyway, he didn’t know how to swim.

  All that could be put right, he told himself, and he resolved to do something about it fast. Daily workouts in one of those gyms he saw advertised in all the newspapers, offering Corrective Body Building and Conditioning. Swimming lessons, too, in some secluded pool where he wouldn’t run into any of the friends he and Handsome were bound to make. A quart of milk a day. Maybe two quarts. They could afford it now. And he’d rent a sun lamp.

  Otherwise, he felt thoroughly pleased with the world around him, especially with the swimming pool. Of course it wasn’t a very big or very elaborate pool, and it wasn’t beside some Hollywood mansion, nor part of a fashionable hotel or exclusive club. Nor for that matter was the Skylight Motel a really first-class motel. But it was a swimming pool, bright blue-green, and this was Hollywood, and he was happy.

  He put out the cigarette, stretched luxuriously, and went back to reading the New Visitor’s Guide to Hollywood.

  Handsome came splashing up out of the pool and sprawled on the smooth-colored tile beside Bingo, shaking the water out of his hair.

  “Bingo,” he said, a shade unhappily, “what are we gonna do?”

  Bingo, president of the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America: New York and Hollywood (“We’re going to expand, aren’t we?”), put down the guidebook reluctantly, his finger marking the page headed “Chinchilla Farm… Chinese Theatre (Grauman’s)… Ciro’s.”

  “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “we got all afternoon yet. We could drive around a little and see things.”

  “We’ve already drove around and seen things,” Handsome said. “We’ve already seen Hollywood Boulevard, and Sunset Strip, and we’ve passed by two movie studios and the Brown Derby. I mean, Bingo, what are we going to do?”

  Bingo was silent for a minute. There was a cloud, a very tiny one, to be sure, but a cloud, on the horizon of this new paradise, but he wasn’t ready to admit it yet. He said, at last, “I’ll think of something. Handsome, don’t you trust me? We’re going to get rich.”

  “Sure,” Handsome said, with perfect confidence. “Only, Bingo, how?”

  Again Bingo was silent. He wasn’t ready to admit this either, but he had been wondering the same thing.

  After a few minutes Handsome said wistfully, “You want I should go get us some beer?”

  Bingo nodded absent-mindedly and fished in the pocket of his robe for a dollar bill. Then he gazed over the pool and thought things over.

  It hadn’t been so very long ago, in the shabby furnished room in New York’s West Eighties which had served as office, studio and living quarters for the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America, that he and Handsome had set going to Hollywood and getting rich as their ultimate goal. Now they were in Hollywood, and getting rich shouldn’t prove to be an insurmountable problem. It was just a question of finding the right way to go about it, that was all.

  Carrying two cold bottles of beer, Handsome came back from the little delicatessen next to the motel. “We’ve been here three days already,” he said reflectively. “I guess we ought to get our cards printed and get the cameras unpacked and start taking pictures.”

  Bingo looked at him sternly. “That,” he said, “is all in the past. Oh, it was all right back in Central Park, when we were just getting started. But we’ve arrived, Handsome. You’ve got to remember, we’re big shots now. We can’t go around Hollywood taking sidewalk pictures and passing out cards to mail in with a quarter, and spieling, ‘An action picture of you has just been taken! See how you’d look in the newsreels—’”

  He shook his head and drew a long breath, warming up to his subject. “We’re going to do big things.” What things, he didn’t know yet. “Just look where we are already. Practically yesterday we owed seventeen dollars back rent on a nine-dollar-a-week room. The cameras and two of my suits were in hock. Now—” He waved a hand toward the pool and the motel which, even though second rate, was still the most luxurious place they’d lived in yet. “And we’ve got a whole trunk full of clothes, and two suitcases besides plus the swimming things we bought yesterday, and a swell big maroon convertible, and almost three thousand dollars in cash.”

  “Two thousand, seven hundred and seventy-three dollars,” Handsome said. “And fifty-five cents. I took out for the beer.”

  “Well then,” Bingo said, as though that answered everything. It hadn’t answered Handsome’s big question though, nor his own, and he knew it. He began firmly, “We’ll start right in looking for some smart investments—” and then stopped short. Handsome, though he never said so out loud, frequently took a gloomy view of Bingo’s smart investments. Even of those that had paid off remarkably well in the end, in spite of putting them through considerable hardship, not to say peril.

  He began again. “We’ll start looking for a place to live. A good address. And then, a superexcellent office setup.”

  Handsome stared at the pool and said nothing. Bingo was a little relieved at that. Because there was only one sentence that could follow his last one. “… And then find something for the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation to do in those offices.” He wasn’t going to say it out loud.

  Oh well, he’d think of something. Or something would turn up. It always had.

  He finished his beer, rose, and said as heartily as though he didn’t have a single worry on his mind, “Let’s get dressed and get started, while the day’s still with us.”

  As always, it took him considerably longer to dress than it did Handsome. The selection of exactly the right clothes always took a little time. Something conservative for this occasion, he decided, and yet not depressing. He finally settled for the fawn gabardine slacks, the new avocado-green shirt and a lemon-yellow tie that he felt added just the right harmonious and carefree touch. He surveyed himself in the mirror as he tied it. Sandy hair, a sharp-featured, slightly freckled face, blue-green eyes and a wide grin. Oh well, not everybody could look like Handsome.

  He folded a lemon-yellow handkerchief carefully and tucked it in his breast pocket, ran the comb through his hair one more time, gave himself a final approving survey in the glass, and went outside.

  Handsome had grabbed and put on the first clothes that had been at hand. Bingo sighed. He still hadn’t g
iven up trying to impress the great importance of splendid, or at least well-matched, clothes on his junior partner, yet there were times—

  But in spite of the fact that he was wearing navy blue corduroy slacks and a tan pullover sweater—Bingo consoled himself that they were freshly pressed slacks and a new sweater—Handsome was making a highly favorable impression on the gorgeous blonde who sat beside him on the loafer-lounge.

  Bingo paused for a moment to admire her. He’d seen her before, and knew that she was the manager of the motel. At least she ran the office, took the registrations and money in advance, and sent the maid down with towels. A frail, white-haired old lady, who seemed to live in a rocking chair in a corner of the office, crocheting lace, had been pointed out to him as her mother. A nice girl, Bingo decided approvingly, looking after her helpless old mother so nicely. Too bad she had to be wasted in a job like this.

  She was on the smallish side, and delightfully curved. Her face, well, Bingo tried to find another word for “gorgeous” and gave up. It was that, gorgeous. Her hair was the pure, spun gold usually seen only in home permanent advertisements, and at the moment she had it pulled loosely to the back of her head and fastened there with a turquoise ribbon from which it hung to the back of her neck in engaging little curls. Her pale pink pedal pushers, matching off-the-shoulder blouse and turquoise ballet slippers, did seem rather informal wear for a motel manager on duty, but after all, Bingo reminded himself, this was not New York. And perhaps she did have a touch too much make-up on her startlingly long eyelashes, but after all, this was Hollywood.

  And as usual, she’d seen Handsome first. It always happened that way, with gorgeous girls.

  “—it was in a Sunday supplement, October 16, 1955,” Handsome was saying as he came near. “I was specially interested in anything about swimming because the week before Florence Chadwick broke a record swimming the English Channel. October 12th. That was the day my great-uncle, Stanley Kusak, celebrated his golden wedding anniversary. He had eleven living children and thirty-eight grandchildren present.”

  The gorgeous girl looked a little dazed but game. “Did they all swim too?”

  Handsome looked faintly surprised at the question. He shook his head. “No. They all lived on farms up near Albany.”

  Bingo decided it was time to lend a hand. He stepped up and said pleasantly, “That article you were telling the lady about—”

  “It was about cutting the cost in cleaning swimming pools,” Handsome said. “I thought she might be interested. Did I do wrong, Bingo?”

  “No,” Bingo told him, “you’re doing just fine.” The strange working of Handsome’s memory would never stop fascinating him. “I don’t suppose you remember what page it was on.”

  Handsome blinked, thought for a moment, and said, “It was on page fourteen, the left-hand corner. Right opposite was a picture story about the Vicksburg Museum. It’s really called the Old Court House Museum, and it’s got more than five thousand items. Mostly small stuff, though.”

  The blonde said, “Just what kind of games do you boys play, anyhow?”

  “It’s no game,” Bingo assured her gravely. “My partner happens to have a remarkable memory, that’s all. Photographic.”

  She looked impressed. “He oughta go on TV. He’d get rich.”

  Bingo had thought of that too, more than once, and discarded the idea.

  “So should you,” he said gallantly, “Miss—”

  “Mariposa DeLee,” she said. “Mrs. Mariposa DeLee.” She added, “I’m a widow.”

  “A very pretty name,” Bingo said.

  “Just don’t ask me if I thought it up myself,” she said, a little snappishly. “Or if it’s a press agent’s dream. My mother gave me the Mariposa, and I married the DeLee.”

  “Mariposa is the name of a lily,” Handsome said politely. “It suits you.”

  Bingo wished he could say things like that, just accidentally. “My partner,” he said, “would be wasting his time on TV. Because he’s probably the best photographer in the world.” He whipped out one of their business cards. She examined it, properly impressed.

  “We decided to move our base of operations to Hollywood,” Bingo said. “Bigger opportunities out here. Soon as we find suitable business space and get organized, you must look us up.” He might not be six foot one, and with dark, wavy hair, but he prided himself that there was one thing he could do outstandingly well: talk. “You know, a pretty, talented girl like you ought to be working some place where you’d be seen by important people. You’re just wasted working in this motel.”

  “I’m working in this motel,” she told him very calmly, “because I own the joint. And I don’t want to be in pictures. I never wanted to be in pictures. All I want is to own a whole chain of motels.” She looked him in the eye.

  Bingo caught his breath with an effort. He took another, and closer, look at Mariposa DeLee. This time he looked at the make-up, especially around her eyes, and at the roots of her spun gold hair. He estimated the age of her mother in the rocking chair and did some rapid mental arithmetic. Finally he said, a little lamely, “Well, you certainly have a nice place here, ma’am.”

  “And if you want to read more about cleaning your swimming pool—” Handsome said.

  She gave him the smile women of all ages reserved for Handsome Kusak, and said, “I’ll call you right up.” The smile was big enough to take in both of them. “I suppose you boys are out to see some more of the town.”

  “We’ll be looking around,” Bingo said. “We’ve got to find suitable office space. We thought we’d just drive along the Strip this afternoon. And sooner or later we’ve got to find a permanent place to live. A house, perhaps. Not large, but”—he couldn’t resist—“with a pool, of course.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Especially since your pal knows how to keep one clean.” She looked at them thoughtfully. “You know what you ought to do this afternoon? Keep going out on Sunset and look at the houses where all the movie stars live.”

  “I’d like to do that,” Bingo said. He added quickly, “As a basis for comparison.”

  “Only we don’t know which ones are which,” Handsome said guilelessly, and Bingo could have throttled him.

  “That’s no problem,” she said. “You just drive out Sunset Boulevard and you’ll see some stands selling maps of movie stars’ homes. That’s what you need. Shows you right where every one of them is. Stop at the first stand on the right, it’s the best.”

  It was a wonderful idea. Suddenly Bingo felt that the whole day was made golden. Someday, he promised himself, they’d do something nice, real nice, for Mariposa DeLee.

  They went on out to the shining maroon convertible. Bingo repressed a desire to pat it affectionately. A wonderful day, probably to be a wonderfully lucky day.

  Neither he nor Handsome noticed that as they drove away, Mariposa DeLee rushed to the telephone in the office. Nor that the little old lady in the rocking chair had dropped her crocheting and was just laughing like everything.

  two

  “She’s a real nice old lady,” Handsome said, heading the convertible up toward Sunset Strip.

  “Handsome!” Bingo said reprovingly. “She’s not old. Just mature.” He added, “And very well preserved, too.”

  “Okay, Bingo,” Handsome said. He turned expertly up Fairfax Avenue. “Only she remembered reading in the newspapers about Floyd Collins. Which was in 1925.”

  “I don’t care if she remembers reading about the San Francisco earthquake,” Bingo said, “and I don’t remember what year that was.”

  “1906,” Handsome said. “And she couldn’t have—”

  “She was very polite to us,” Bingo said. Somehow he had to regain the few inches of height he felt he’d lost. “Handsome, when you meet a lady like that, a mature lady, who is trying very hard not to look mature, it’s always polite to make like she was getting away with it, which I did.” The inches were beginning to come back. “Why, as soon as I spotte
d those false eyelashes the night we registered—”

  “Gee, Bingo,” Handsome said admiringly. “And I thought she had you fooled!”

  The inches were all back in place again, every last one of them.

  Handsome swung the convertible west on Sunset Boulevard. Bingo sat up and said, “Drive a little easy. See, on the left there, that’s Schwab’s drugstore.” He glanced at the guidebook. “It says you frequently see a star or two at the counter.” He considered suggesting they stop for a quick malt, but by that time they were a block past. A moment later he said, “There’s the Garden of Allah.”

  Handsome peered quickly and said, “It looks like a nice motel, too, Bingo.”

  Bingo refrained from comment. He refrained, too, when Handsome remained unimpressed by Sunset Towers and even Ciro’s. He purposely kept quiet as they passed the Lou Costello Building and the Mocambo, but he did indicate the Bing Crosby Building and told Handsome again to slow down, peering intently as they drove past.

  “He’s probably away playing golf some place,” Handsome said.

  “You don’t think I expected to see him come walking out the door,” Bingo said indignantly. He consulted the book again. “Here are located the Finlandia Baths, where the top stars go for massage.” He didn’t read that out loud, but he made a mental note that as soon as they were settled and organized and doing well, that would be one of his first investments. And well worth while, too. “Look, there’s the Beverly Hills Hotel—”

  This, he told himself again, was living.

  “You know, Handsome,” he said dreamily, “when we buy a house—” He paused. Naturally they’d buy a house, soon as things got really moving. “What we’re going to get is a movie star’s mansion. The real article.”

  “If you say so, Bingo,” Handsome said, with that same serene confidence.

  “One that belonged to somebody big, and important,” he went on, half to himself. “So we can say to people, ‘Y’know, this house used to belong to so-and-so.’” He’d say it modestly, of course. “Houses must be being sold all the time. People get divorced, or move, or go to live in Spain or Paris, or Mexico, or some place. I’m always reading about it in the columns. It’s just a question of finding the right place and the right time.” He added mentally, “And the right money.” But that would come.